Cheesemaker and thorn-in-the-side of the food safety bureaucrats, Biddy Fraser-Davies, is hopeful her experience with officialdom will improve the lot of her fellow artisan cheesemakers. Having been threatened with closure for insufficient record keeping she is now filling in a ridiculous amount of forms for each cheese and complying with a testing regime that’s costing a small fortune (see last post). However, her undoubted frustration is tempered by the knowledge that she is proving her point: the food safety authority’s one-size fits all policy is unecessarily onerous and needs to be re-jigged to fit the needs of the country’s small cheesemakers.
The information she is collecting, in the form of a steadily increasing pile of folders and lab reports, will be used by the Ministry of Agriculture (MAF now incorporates the NZFSA) to help design a pared down Risk Management Programme (RMP) for micro cheesemakers who milk their own animals, produce less than 1000 litres of milk per week and only make hard cheese.
Don’t hold your breath – the wheels of officialdom are moving ever so slowly – but the following letter, elicited from the Minister for Food Safety, Kate Wilkinson, gives Biddy some hope.
“…….I understand that this situation exists in accord with an agreement that you have made with MAF for the purpose of undertaking a trial to determine the feasibility of a micro cheesemakers RMP template which has the potential to substantially reduce your operating costs, and those in a similar situation to yourself…………. I trust that you will be able to successfully complete the trial and that the micro cheesemakers template will indeed prove to be advantageous to you and your business”. (2/5/2011)
And if her dogged persistence pays off in that regard, Biddy intends taking her campaign to the next stage. She’d like to see the Risk Management Programme extended to include artisanal cheeses made from raw milk. I’ll keep you posted.
Pass the Salt 
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